Here in the UK I worked for a small company in 2001. Each person recorded time spent on projects on one spreadsheet on a shared drive, a nightmare. I had a free website with uklinux (now no more) and in my spare time quickly knocked together a web based solution. Over a year or two I enhanced it, in my own time, and everyone liked it. But the company started losing money and one day the finance director came up to me and said my contract said that the system belonged to the company and I should hand it over. Well it was on my web site - I said no. Next day people complained they couldn't log in. I sent them to the finance director! Oh, and I had explained to the systems guys how to do a daily download of their data, so that was OK wasn't it? Next day finance director changed his mind.

The company did go bust, and only then did I open it up as a paid service. I ran it as a side project, but got a steady profit from it. Closed it when I retired.